My over-excitement yesterday was unrelated to a lottery ticket I bought the day before because I didn’t even match one number. Simply, I was just overjoyed that the Lagos State Government announced it had launched a COVID-19 website to keep residents with up-to-date information on the coronavirus pandemic in the state.
The State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu through his Special Adviser Mr. Olatunbosun Alake, said that the website: covid19.lagosstate.gov.ng was an avenue to restrain the spread of false information regarding the pandemic. At a period when nonsensical but conspiracy theories have penetrated the fabrics of COVID-19 extinction strategies, such a portal becomes obligatory in the system communication effectiveness.
My excitement, however, died out after a visit to the website. Great idea, then I wondered if this site was an experimental site facilitated by some elementary school interns, or a professional site paid for with the people’s tax money! It was syndication feeds (FREE) built into some application plug-ins (FREE) and hosted as a site. Feed called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a standardized content distribution technique that allows users FREE Access to up-to-date information. With an annual domain and host account of $12 and $48.00 respectively, could this government be sincere enough to share the cost of this website project to tax-payers?
But please do not get me wrong, because the idea to provide such an information conveyance platform by Lagos State must be applauded. Perhaps, this site may have been donated by a Kindergarten pupil as a COVID-19 gesture.
However, my concern is borne out of curiosity aroused by the pattern of saddening price-gauging going on in Nigeria’s public as they surf the tidal waves of COVID-19. For instance, this same Lagos State led a social media campaign about providing her residents with food-relief throughout the quarantine period. But frustrated residents countered with images and videos of ridiculously insufficient grocery tossed on them by Government representatives. Residents alleged bias and lies in its distribution, and lamented the implausibility of having an estate of 25 buildings (over-packed with families) having to share two bags of rice and five loaves of bread. Are you kidding me?
Subsequently, Nigeria’s Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed, last week hinted that the country requested $6.9bn from multilateral lenders to combat the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Each state government has tendered outrageous amounts attributed to COVID-19 expenses. Local governments are not left behind as each paraded bogus proposals and invoices attributed to the COVID-19 relief. They have flooded the social media with fictitious photos of decorated isolation centers and palettes of foodstuffs that do not exist.
As you can see, the aim of this article is not to discourage civil service efforts, but to give a heads-up on the value of the mediocrity you were serviced with before you get the actual invoice cost! Unfortunately, this seems to be a culture in Nigeria’s public sector – a crooked pattern of deception and criminality. The Nigerian civil service system is overridden with heartless representatives who commandeer the public treasury and sit on public resources. Every project suffers the same mayhem of bribery or cost gouging to accommodate greedy facilitators and public thieves who infect the public sector like voracious cancers.
Before you ask me for a solution to this issue, let me answer you. The solution is YOU, the voter. The solution lies in your voting power – and the quality of people you vote to “manage” your state and national treasuries. If you vote thieves in office, you automatically become robbery victims.
■ Anthony Ogbo, PhD, is on the Editorial Board of The West African Pilot News. He is a university professor and contributes cartoon and stories about elite politics, ethnicity and national integration, civil society, and social movement.
